KDE 4 is seen by many to be the next big step on the free software desktop, while many do not yet advise it for everyday use. Either way, it is an innovative release and in line with Fedora's goal of providing the latest and greatest free software it is set to be the default KDE environment in the next major release of Fedora. We caught up with a few members of the KDE Special Interest Group for an interview about the work they are doing to get it ready for release, their own opinions on the software and what they think about the progress made by Fedora in embracing KDE.

Comments

They will have TONS of work to ship a usable and bug free KDE 4.0 :)
This is kind of both good and bad for KDE. On a side they will fix bugs and more people using KDE means more bug reports and more bugs fixed (even if only to stop the SPAM of reports). On the other side a lot of people will get disapointed with KDE4, will run ASAP to gnome and never look back again :-P

"On the other side a lot of people will get disapointed with KDE4, will run ASAP to gnome and never look back again :-P"

Based on some of the old reviews of GNOME 2.0.0 I've read from the time of its release, you could easily have predicted that everyone would have switched to KDE and stayed there. And yet, according to widespread online polls, GNOME is currently the more popular of the two DEs.

The line of reasoning misses the fact that the Linux desktop is still growing, possibly at an accelerated rate compared to previous years, and that many newcomers first tastes of GNOME and KDE will be GNOME 2.2x vs KDE 4.1 or 4.2. In fact, only a small proportion of newcomers - just for those joining up this year, let alone all of the droves that will join in years to come - will have to put up with the roughness of KDE 4.0.x or (to a hopefully far lesser degree) 4.1. Predictions of an irreversible shift based on a single short window of sub-par releases are fairly naive and not supported by historical evidence, IMO.

The only reliable poll would measure those who switched gnome<->kde and stayed switched. That way you are talking about individuals who have experienced both and made an informed decision (uninfluenced by biases in the original installation).

KDE is better, Gnome is better. Does it really matter? That is one of the thngs that nearly put me off the linux community when I was looking to make the switch from windows. Personally when someone I know wants to move to linux, I don't tell them which to use, I just give them the links to both the live cd's of opensuse gnome and kde and tell them to find which best suits them. Then I tell them that they should also try out the different distro's until they find which suits them. I get tired of the which desktop is better, which distro is better and I find it really puts people off linux

They are just to stupid to see that world is not black and white and that in real life things are a bi more complicated.
As one sad:
People like lies, because truth is to complicated to understand and to difficult to accept...

I really doubt the validity of the last point. If someone who has never seen, let alone work with, a Linux desktop gets his first taste with KDE 4.0.0 (or 4.0.1) and feels let down, my guess is that he would be far more likely to run back to Windows than to Gnome. Not because Gnome is necessarily better or worse, but because he would judge the entire Linux experience on his KDE 4.0 experience.

Gnome is not bad, but personally I find KDE 4.0.0. more stable and useful than the current stable version of Gnome, despite the inevitable temporary regressions a transition of this magnitude involves.

I'm actually switching to Fedora when it comes out BECAUSE they're the first to embrace KDE 4.0. That's what I love about Linux. No lock in. Tons of choices. Ever since I put /home on a separate partition, I see no problems in trying them all out.

If by some miracle SUSE 11 gets delayed 1 month (is that too much to ask? :rolls eyes: ) so it coincides with KDE 4.1 and Qt 4.4 I'll probably switch back to openSuse then.

I pretty much gave up on Kubuntu. Like other posters said. They treat KDE as a red-headed-stepchild, so why bother anymore. Kubuntu will be interesting again to me when they support KDE 4.X straight out of the box, and not just community-supported. Until then, I'm lucky I have CHOICE!!

We will seriously consider pushing KDE 4.1 as a Fedora 9 update once it is out, so you won't have to switch just to get 4.1. Qt 4.4 might even make it into the release, or it can be pushed as an update too (pushing KDE 4.1 will imply pushing Qt 4.4 too anyway).